Wednesday, January 27, 2010

The Wednesday Quiz I:9 -- Twentieth Century Art

The Wednesday Quiz is a test of knowledge and intuition. Looking up answers or asking your buddy is a capital crime. Questions about the rules are answered here.

This week's Quiz is a identification game. For each image,

Name the Artist

There are twelve images here, so they are worth 8 1/3 points apiece. If you can't recall the artist's name, but can give a title or some other relevant information about the piece, you may receive a subjective score of up to five points.

1. Monet, one of his Water Lilies.2. O'Keefe, one of her studies of the sexual organs of plants.3. Mondrian, one of his quilts.4. Oh, Jackson Pollack, why not.5. Some probably really famous guy whose works I automatically lump into the "I can paint large squares of color on canvas too so why am I not rich?"6. Oooh ooh ooh I know this one! Only the name has slipped my mind. Let's go with Kandinsky.7. Roy ... Lichtenstien? Or is that the country? I'll bet this is titled "You Never Loved Me!"8. Somebody famous in folk art. I like it.9. That would be Magritte.10. Erm - Picasso?11. No idea. It is titled "The Underwater Bowling League."12. Clueless, but I like this one too.

1. Claude Monet - Water Lilies2. Georgia O'Keefe - Poppies3. Mondrian - Lines and Colors4. Jackson Pollock - Splashes (I've seen this painting in real life - I totally couldn't get Pollock and then I went to see a whole bunch of his paintings and then I got it.)5. Rothko - Purple, Orange, and Cream (I've seen this one too)6. Matisse7. Oh, that one guy who does all the paintings like this. I'm running out of steam, now.8. ?9. Magritte?10. Picasso?11. ?12. ??

1 Claude Monet, one of the waterlily series, mid-career losing his sight, but his son was still alive.2 Georgia O'Keef - omg,I've never even thought about how to spell her last name. O'keif? O'keefe? You know the one.3 Mondrian, famous for making quilt patterns.4 Jackson Pollak5 Mark Rothko - but not the one I fell in love with at the SF MOMA6 Joan Miro?7 Roy Leichtenshtein?8 Jasper Johns from his flag series9 guessing Magritte, but it's not super familiar10 "Nude Decending the Stairs" Duchamp??11 oh uh... this one makes me thing "Miro" too... so I'm guessing I'm wrong on one of these12 I have never seen anything like this one.... brand new artist to me. I'm guessing it's a guy named Chris.

1. Monet2. 3. Probably the same artist whose work you imitated in a quilt recently, but the name eludes me.4. Pollack (sp?)5. 6. Miro7. Lichtenstein8. Warhol (sp?)9. 10. Escher11. Hmmm... maybe THIS one is Miro...12.

I thought I would be faced with famous paintings whose artists I hadn't bothered to remember, but there are several images here I've never seen before. I think my art education ended around 1950.

1. Monet (thanks, Titanic)2. I've never seen that. My only guess isn't 20th C.3. Piet Mondrian 4. Title: "Hey, you forgot to lay a drop sheet" 5. Title: "Mommy, I'm out of purple paint"6. vaguely like Picasso7. comic book style, perhaps Warhol?8. For modern pop culture images Andy Warhol is still my go-to guy.9. Magritte. I think it was on the same page as Ceci n'est pas un pipe in an art history book I looked at once.10. Picasso - If any of these is a Picasso, this is the real one11. Exactly the sort of thing I draw, seriously. Have you been raiding my doodles?12. American, obviously but I've never seen it. Contemporary American artist ... I got nothing.

Oh dear...Your art quizzes are always the ones I fail on. Here goes nothing...1.I think it's a Monet Waterlily2.Dunno, but it's very pretty. Those flowers are hugging.3. Mondrian. I never really understood what he was getting at. Kinda classy looking, though, isn't it?4. Pollack. I've had the pleasure of seeing Blue Poles at the national gallery.5. Hmm, I've seen something by this guy before at the gallery too, but I've got nothing.6. That's a Kadinsky. I LIKE Kadinsky's. I should buy some prints or something sometime and put them on my ceiling.7. Argh, I'll shoot myself not knowing the name of this guy.8.Ooh, and this one. I liked this series, but damn if I can remember his name.9. That's Magritte! I love this one.10. I got nothing. IS that a suit of armour or something?11. That's a Miro. I've always thought of it as 'The prodigal Son', but I doubt that's the actual name. We have a floor rug with this on it.12. I dunno, it's great though, isn't it?

Hey (I think) I know some of these! 1. Monet2. Georgia O'Keefe3. Mondrian4. Pollock5. Rothko6. Kandinsky7. Yeah...got nothing...8. And I should definitely know this one9. But I've never seen this one in my life10. Picasso? 11. Miro12. I don't know but it looks familiar from parts of my real life past

1 Monet2 Georgia O'Keefe(?)3 Mondrian (sp?)4 Jackson Pollock5 Mark Rothko6 Kandinsky7 Andy Warhol?8 Jasper Johns9 Rene Magritte10 Nude Descending a Staircase (his name will come to me in a minute--does it help to know that some wag described it as looking like an explosion in a shingle factory?)(Oh got it, Marcel Duchamp. The "Urinal" guy.)11 Picasso? Total guess. Doesn't really look like the Picassos I'm familiar with.12 Oh, that guy. You know. Him.

OK, first of all -- the life of Michael5000 is, as some of you know, rather richer with incident at the moment than has been the case in the past. The L&TM5K may well be showing gaps and cracks for a while, such as delayed Quiz results. This hurts me more than it hurts you.

Having said that: yes, as Aviatrix deduced, for the most part these were representative works from artists, not necessarily their greatest hits. The answers were as follows!

No changes in place this week, although there was some narrowing of gaps and some pulling away. la gringa and Mrs.5000 are going to have trouble producing more points in the back stretch simply because their 8th best score is already pretty good. Aviatrix and Elizabeth still only have seven of eight scores on the board. Calico and d have only showed up for 5 and 4 quizzes respectively, but have hit them hard enough to sneak into the top ten.

I detect heavy use of drugs. I predict we will look back upon modern art and laugh. Like fashion: sheep led astray. But Magritte was onto something. Went to the Googleheim last year: tosh and not in the Peter sense. Many scribbles by John Cage. Tosh! Real art right up the street. 50 million Elvis fans CAN be wrong!

When I read the answers I had a moment of elation, imagining that I had actually managed to concoct a correct minority-opinion spelling of Liechtenstien. It's really Roy Lichtenstein (though you need to keep in that third e up front when labeling blank maps of Europe). But it's kinda sweet to have one's spelling trusted, even when undeserved...

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